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Arkas was born and raised in the Netherlands, which he commonly refers to as Holland.[9] Arkas lives in the North of the Netherlands.[10] He speaks Dutch as his first language.[9] He previously studied neurobiology at university but lost interest around December 2013.[11] Arkas considered YouTube a full time job[11] before returning to university in September 2014.[12] His Minecraft username is a modified version of "Arkan",[13] a gamer tag that originated from a Jedi roleplaying server, that was no longer available when he made his account.[14]

In his spare time, Arkas creates music.[15] Some of the music used in his videos is made by himself. When asked about releasing his music in March 2014, Arkas says "[his] music isn't ready for release,"[16] but since June 2014, has shared his music on SoundCloud.[17]

Through his love for music, Arkas often attends music festivals held in the Netherlands.[18] He attended Lowlands festival in August 2012, and invited fans to approach him,[19] but was not recognized by anyone.[20] Arkas had hinted at travelling to Paris, France for MineCon 2012,[21] but did not attend for financial reasons.[22] In April 2014, Arkas confirmed he would be attending EGX London held in September 2014.[23] He made his first public appearance in a vlog on 29 August 2014.[24]

Arkas used to be the most enigmatic member of the server due to his lack of videos and lack of appearances in other members' videos until June 2012 when his voice was first heard during a prank by mcgamer and Nebris on Etho.[25] For a long period of time, Arkas' YouTube channel had only one video, which was a video submission for Guude's contest to enter the server titled "Arkas' Arena Contest Entry".[26] The video was not publicly available for a long time,[27] but was republicized when Arkas hit 100,000 subscribers.[28] Arkas' first video on the MindCrack server was livestreamed to Twitch on 10 June 2012,[29] but was not archived. His first YouTube video from the MindCrack server, uploaded on 10 July 2012,[30] earned him more than 10,000 subscribers overnight.[31] Arkas cites encouragement from fans and other MindCrack members, notably VintageBeef, as the reason he began Let's Playing.[32]

Arkas is considered a very talented builder and one of the best,[33] if not the best,[34] on the server. In the Season 3 spawn village, he rebuilt his house at least three times, and also built a subway system which connected to his builds along with the spawn farms and mine. He had a gigantic floating disc in the middle of the ocean, the Mothership, which was undergoing reconstruction until the closure of the server. The Mothership connected to his spawn house through the subway and also to his Mycelium Village which was used as a villager supply by other members of the server. He also helped Bdoubleo on his arena, and made a builder's shack near it.

Arkas' first project on the season 4 server was his jungle city, Arkasdam. He settled in the jungle to utilize the bright green foliage found there.[35] He built up the city for a while throughout the season. He later built a theater and a block exchange shop at spawn. However he then burnt the theater down due to his dissatisfaction with the build. He also built a dwarven village which was connected to Arkasdam and other places on the server with a path.

In the 5th season, Arkas immediately began work on a hilltop building that offered a great view over spawn. Arkas owned a rabbit, Snuggles, before it was killed by AnderZEL. A tomb near his spawn building was dedicated to Snuggles, with messages left by other members of the server.